Writing Fiction For All You're Worth

200 Pages·2012·0.8 MB·English

by  James Scott Bell

Writing Fiction for All You’re Worth
James Scott Bell
Copyright © 2011 James Scott Bell
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the
author.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
In Defense of How-to-Write Books
A NEVER ENDING WRITING IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
The Six Critical Success Factors of Writers
The Six Critical Success Factors of Fiction
THE WRITING WORLD
The Digital Revolution
Just Because You Wrote It Doesn’t Mean You Should Publish It
Act Like a Professional
THE WRITING LIFE
Some of My Favorite Writing Quotes
My Personal Writing Routine
Is the Outlook for Fiction Bleak?
Stay Thirsty
Driving Dangerously
Hanging Upside Down and Other Creative Moves
Will Arrogance Get You Published?
Envy
A Sense of Where You Are
Courage to Write
About Platforms
10 Things You Need to Know About Agents
Energy to Write
Do Not Go Gentle Onto That Good Page
Blown Calls
Writing on the Move
The Home Stretch
Who is a Real Writer?
Growing as a Writer
When Should You Quit Writing?
THE WRITING CRAFT
A Glimpse At My Writing Notebook
Character Arc?
Ten Ideas From One Article
Serendipity
What’s in a Name?
Shake, Rattle and Write
Action Scenes
A Solid Bridge
Need a Check Up?
Style Envy
Cool Papa Writing
First Person Boring
Hitting the Wall
Sex, Smells and Thrills
Ya Gotta Have Heart
Synopsis Writing Made Easy
The Stress Free Query
Garlic Breath, or What Not to Do on Your Opening Page
How to Grab Them on Page One
Death to Prologues?
What About the Semi-Colon?
How to Write Your Last Page
The Great Italics Controversy
One Plus One Equals Three
How Many Subplots is Too Many?
The First Line Game
Before You Submit
Just Go
Backstory
Pro and Con
How to Benefit from NaNoWriMo
INTERVIEWS
Jeffery Deaver
Tess Gerritsen
David Morrell
Alex Kava
Brad Thor
Michael Palmer
David Baldacci
Carla Neggers
Eric Van Lustbader
Steve Martini
Sarah Pekkanen
Boyd Morrison
INTRODUCTION
In Defense of How-to-Write Books
Every now and again I hear some author putting down how-tos. “You can only
learn to write by writing,” they’ll say. “Don’t waste your time studying writing
books. Just put a page in front of you and write!”
Which strikes me as making as much sense as saying, “You can only learn to do
brain surgery by doing brain surgery. Don’t waste your time studying brain
surgery. Just cut open heads and go!”
Excuse me if I show a preference for a sawbones who has studied under the
tutelage of experienced surgeons.
Another trope is, “No one ever learned to write by reading about writing.”
Really? Isn’t that a bit cheeky, unless you’ve interviewed every published writer
out there?
The writer I know best – me – absolutely learned to write by reading how-tos. I
had been fed the bunk that “writers are born, not made” while in college, and I
bought it, in part because I took a course from Raymond Carver and couldn’t do
what he did. (I didn’t know at the time that there was more than one way to “do”
fiction. I thought everybody had to pass through the same tunnel.)
When I finally decided I had to try to learn to write, even if I never got
published, I went after it with a club. I started gathering books on writing, read
Writer’s Digest religiously (especially Lawrence Block’s fiction column), took
some classes, and wrote every day. Living in L.A. it was required that I try
screenwriting first, so I wrote four complete screenplays in one year, giving
them to a film school friend, who patiently read them and told me they weren’t
working. But he didn’t know why.
Then one day I read a chapter in a book by the great writing teacher Jack
Bickham. And I had an epiphany. Literally. Light bulbs and fireworks went off
inside my head, and I finally got it. Or at least a big part of it.
So I wrote another screenplay, and that was the one that my friend liked. The
next one I wrote got optioned, and the one after that got me into one of the top